Buy it... if you're curious to hear Patrick Doyle's keen melodic
and instrumental sensibilities repackage techniques from Bernard
Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Ottman's music for the thriller
genre into an engagingly intelligent hidden gem.

Avoid it... if Doyle's sometimes overstated dramatic sense
predictably conveys too obvious of a narrative for you, because he
painstakingly emulates the wildly varied emotional state of the
protagonist in this otherwise awful sex romp of a picture.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

FILMTRACKS TRAFFIC RANK: #1,691

WRITTEN
7/21/11

BUY IT

Doyle

Killing Me Softly: (Patrick Doyle) Sex thrillers
don't come any worse than Killing Me Softly, famed Chinese
director Chen Kaige's only English-language film after a series of
critical successes led by Farewell My Concubine. Released
initially in Europe, the tale of graphic sex and suspicions of murder
was received so badly that it debuted only on cable in the United
States, an unrated version on DVD eventually yielding some marginal
interest. Its $25 million budget from MGM was flushed down the toilet
because of a combination of fundamental problems with the film, foremost
a terrible adaptation by Nicci Gerrard and Sean French of an existing
novel. Performances by lead actors Heather Graham, Joseph Fiennes, and
Natascha McElhone were poorly directed by Kaige as well, whatever
passion generated by the sordid nature of the story betrayed by
uninspired nude players. A predictable plot twist involving incest and
death at the end is a painful epilogue, leaving Killing Me Softly
as a carnal spectacle for only those who wish to view Graham and Fiennes
engaged in graphic depictions of a variety of kinky sex acts.
Fortunately, among the few things Kaige did right with the film was his
conception of its music. The director's films have often featured
excellent soundtracks (including The Promise in 2005), and
Patrick Doyle's output for Killing Me Softly is a lasting
highlight. The popular Scottish composer has rarely written music for
the thriller genre, but he has confessed to loving working in that mode,
and he clearly took the 2002 film more seriously than anyone might have
expected. He is, of course, a composer with melodic sensibilities at the
core, and he approached Killing Me Softly with a sense of
rhythmic orchestral tension and manipulation of theme that many in the
mainstream may find similar to Jerry Goldsmith's famous sound for
Basic Instinct. For Doyle, this score was among the last he
composed on paper before adopting the software available and commonly
used by other composers of the era, and he remains proud of the
complexity that he wrote by hand into the score's many lines of
activity. It is a purely symphonic work, casting aside electronics but
emphasizing a hint of tribal percussion in places to accentuate the raw
nature of the sexual encounters. In many ways, if Bernard Herrmann were
alive at the time, Killing Me Softly is a score that would fit
very comfortably in his standard sound for the genre, a compliment to
Doyle for the engaging amount of emotive force conjured for this
occasion.

Three aspects of Killing Me Softly will impress
not only Doyle collectors, but film music enthusiasts in general. First,
its dynamic spread of instrumental duties causes the score to utilize
every player very wisely. From spritely woodwinds representing love at
first sight and romantic violins swaying in the wind for its aftermath
to striking bass string and low brass stabs and figures of force for
suspicions of criminality and bells denoting death at the end, every
application by Doyle to the soundscape in Killing Me Softly is
satisfyingly textured. Some listeners may find these utilizations to be
predictable, therefore, but Doyle and conductor James Shearman manage to
solicit a performance from the ensemble that stands with some of the
composer's most evocative career music. At times, when the score begins
really cook in its latter half, Doyle applies individual players as
striking accents to a rhythmic line (including light percussive tones
and quick high flute notes) in manners not dissimilar to John Ottman's
Incognito. The second aspect of Killing Me Softly worth
noting is Doyle's development of motifs throughout the film. He writes a
multitude of ideas that experience intriguing changes as the work
progresses. A general theme for the lead character is established in the
first few tracks, rollicking in its innocence in "Alice and Jake" but
better foreshadowing danger in its elongated, melodramatic incarnation
in "Front Titles." A weepy love theme heard first in "Don't Turn Away"
highlights the most upbeat moments of the score ("The Wedding" in
particular). It's the usual layered string affair for Doyle that his
collectors will immediately recognize and love, though the composer's
twisting of the idea later in the score, especially in its constant
battle with uncertainty and associated shades of dissonance, is
marvelous. The dark side of the love affair is treated with a
dual-purpose theme that uses pulsations from the deeper strings in waltz
rhythms to denote the physical thrusting seen on screen. While
unadulterated in "First Fling," the waltz movements are translated more
desperate variants almost immediately ("Alice Returns" and "Alice Leaves
Jake"). The alluring but cautious reintroduction of the idea by harp in
"Silk Scarf (Bondage)" is particularly chilling. By the time the
protagonist suspects her husband of possibly being a murderer, Doyle
aptly uses the same rhythmic churning to inform the score's main
suspense motif. Heard first in "Faxes," this quiet, elegant desperation
produces the most engrossing parts of the score. Reprised in "High
Suspicions" and at the conclusion of "End Titles," the suspense motif
offers the best moments of the score's presentation on album.

As for the lesser motifs repeated throughout Killing
Me Softly, the mysterious husband receives a falsely ominous motif
throughout the latter half of the score that denote his wife's fear of
him. The driving, static rhythmic force in "Adele's Letters," punctuated
by incredibly scary descending trombone lines, continues in "Adam
Called" and "The Graveyard," each performance more frantically layered
with seemingly haphazard string activity. Finally, a death motif of
sorts is applied at about 3:30 into "The Graveyard" and returns in
"Deborah Dies," dealing a slight dose of Danny Elfman's most morbid
sensibilities into the revelation scenes for Doyle. The demise of the
passion/waltz and love themes at the end of "Deborah Dies" is truly
accomplished in its intelligence. The same could be said about nearly
every moment in Killing Me Softly, the only exception perhaps
being the overflowing optimism of the love theme's reprise for the
couple's chance encounter in "Two Years Later" (after what they went
through, one could debate whether or not the love theme could ever
express itself with such Golden Age innocence ever again). The final
aspect of Killing Me Softly that requires due recognition is the
quality of its recording, mix, and album presentation. The sections are
masterfully balanced in the mix, tingling and tapped percussion accents
always clearly evident while the whole ensemble is still offered a
perfect amount of light reverb. Listeners attempting to find a downside
to Killing Me Softly could point to the score's over-thought
narrative; Doyle almost goes overboard in his super-careful development
of each individual idea, punctuating every false twist in the film with
very obvious plays from the ensemble. Whereas subtly in suspicion was
the aim, the score sometimes approaches the boundaries of parody without
really attempting to do so, though the same could possibly be said about
Basic Instinct as well. The "over the top" aspect of Killing
Me Softly makes for a very entertaining album however. It was not
released on CD until 2011, when specialty label Quartet Records pressed
1,000 copies of the score in a very attractive package featuring crystal
clear sound and extensive notation. Since the director mangled and
rearranged the score in the final edit of the picture (something Doyle
does not seem to have any lingering issues with), the album includes the
original versions of four cues that were, in most cases, dialed out or
replaced with simple percussive rhythms by Kaige. The resulting album
should be a must-buy for any Doyle collector, the score's intelligence
in thematic development and instrumental balance proving the composer's
mostly unrealized potential in this genre of film. ****@Amazon.com: CD or
Download

Bias Check:

For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.83
(in 29 reviews)and the average viewer rating is 3.47
(in 22,165 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.